More than five dozen activists were indicted on RICO charges last week over the ongoing efforts to halt construction of the city of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center in DeKalb County.
More than five dozen activists were indicted on RICO charges last week over the ongoing efforts to halt construction of the city of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center in DeKalb County.
RICO prosecution requires multiple acts wherein members set up an “illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a “racket”) to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit” through coercion, fraud or extortion.
How in the hell is this going to apply to loosely organized voluntary protesters who are unarmed in the face of heavily armed police?
This is stupid. This case is going to fall apart.
Georgia’s RICO statute isn’t really comparable to the rest of the nation.
They’ll convict on any sort of communication between a small group used to break the smallest laws.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/01/atlanta-cheating-schools-scandal-teachers/
This podcast is specifically about the trump indictment, but also goes into the GA RICO usage: https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/unfortunately-this-episode-is-rico
Did you even read the indictment?
They were organized enough to form a 503c charity and then funnel money in and out of it, track expenses and receipts, and perform reimbursements for supplies for conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism. They also established both on-grid and off-grid communication networks to organize and strategize. They also created and internally published their own educational materials to indoctrinate new recruits to the inner core of the cause.
You and I have very different definitions for “loosely”.
You and I have very different definitions for “illegal coordinated scheme,” " repeatedly or consistently collect a profit through coercion, fraud or extortion," and also “conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism”
You mean a 501c3 charity. Those are all required activities for a 501c3. That is not an criminal enterprise.
Do you actually support our democratic government powers being corrupted into authoritarianism sprinkled with fascism?
That’s what all organizations do, be they religious, charitable, or political.
The entire indictment reads like propaganda piece, carefully crafted as to focus on political ‘anarchist militant’ rhetoric like this is the late 1960s and 70s, to create a false narrative bubble so that it includes any and all of the community organizers involved.
This is an egregious abuse of power through the use of RICO, and it’s not the first time GA has employed it against activist types.
They created booby traps on public property and took at least one completely innocent nonrealted person hostage at gunpoint. Get the fiuck out of here with “egregious abuse of power”. Right to protest doesn’t give you a blank check to maim other people or hold them at gunpoint and it doesn’t threaten democracy to indict them for that.
The RICO case is literally targetting everyone it can and certainly will affect everyone willing to protest. Its called the chilling effect and its a common strategy of authoritarians in government. It’s not actually prosecuting the explicitly henious criminal activity you are trying to reference to justify your support of an obvious egregious abuse of power.
Your position is sophmoric cognitive dissonance, you are demanding to shrink the context of the discussion to justify your pitchfork waving.
RICO is intended to prosecute wealthy and powerful puppeteers who hide behind their disposable pawns to do their dirty work. If this case was only about lawful protest, you have a reasonable argument, but it wasn’t, and you don’t. The fact that they broke laws and harmed innocent bystanders and took action that could have harmed more is OK for you because they did it in the name of a cause you happen to support. Call me whatever you want, you aren’t going to be able to justify the coordinated misdeeds when it infringes on the rights of the innocent.
RICO is intended to prosecute any group of individuals attempting to profit from running a criminal enterprise. The charged individuals as a group having a 501c3 with verbose open records and a verbose paper trail of spending in the first place may even been seen as a possible mitigating factor against finding a RICO conspiracy.
You have no basis in support of prosecution beyond conjecture, and/or you are intentionally ignoring any larger context that doesn’t support your pitchfork desire for prosecution. There is nothing you have put forth that has any forethought or consideration of anything but the prosecutorial indictment claims alone.
I called out your position as bullshit, I didn’t call you an idiot asshole as a person. Learn to recognize the difference, and do better.
Your entire argument hinges on whether the organization had a role to play in the illegal activities vs whether the illegal activities were done by individuals in the organization. If someone in my company does something illegal, there should not be a RICO case against me unless I conspired with them to specifically do that illegal thing.
Well, let’s be real here. It’s the prosecution’s argument. And they obviously believe the organization played a role or they wouldn’t have named those individuals in the indictment.
After reading through it, it does appear that the prosecution believes that senior individuals inside the organization were promoting the illegal behavior without actually getting their hands dirty.